Increasing VelocityThe first day of
principal photography of XXX took place at a
bucolic, leafy green country club in the Los Angeles suburb of Westlake. It all
started fairly quietly--and quickly went zero to sixty as Vin Diesel's Xander
Cage, posing as a parking valet, "borrows" a reactionary state senator's
Corvette for some fairly serious road testing.

Two days later, the
company descended on a secluded location north of L.A., where Cohen and
production designer Gavin Bocquet had discovered a perfect location to double
for rural Colombia. All they needed were thousands of imitation coca plants and
several four-dimensional wooden structures as a perfect replication of a drug
farm. "We knew that we couldn't actually go to Colombia and film this
sequence," says Bocquet, "but about an hour and ten minutes north of
Los Angeles, we found a really interesting green valley which had a river
running through it, and we were excited because it had a look remarkably like
South America. It was a big area to cover with the sets, not only with
full-sized buildings but also with imitation coca plants."

This was only the first
of many environments created by Bocquet and his talented art departments in
three countries on two continents, and the amazingly realistic five-acre coca
farm was destined for an appropriate conclusion: to be utterly destroyed in a
conflagration of explosions and machine gun fire from five "Fuerza Aerea
Colombiana" helicopters zooming overhead. Aerial coordinator Cliff Fleming,
who had just worked with executive producer Arne L. Schmidt and director of
photography Dean Semler, AM, ACS, ASC on the Vietnam War epic We Were
Soldiers, closely collaborated with Rob Cohen and stunt coordinator Lance
Gilbert to create just one of the never-before-seen-or-attempted action
sequences in XXX: a cat-and-mouse chase between a
250cc motorcycle and a Huey helicopter, replete with high jumps and
"tabletops."

The sequence really
tested Vin Diesel's mettle, as he roared down a dirt road on the cycle with
explosive squibs from the Huey's guns going off in every direction. Notes
Cohen of the sequence, "Our cinematographer, Dean Semler, is a fantastic
man and a brilliant cinematographer. To light that huge amount of acreage at
night and give it so much color and fire was just amazing." Even the Oscar-winnning
Semler, who has photographed big-scale action sequences for films like The
Road Warrior, Dances With Wolves and Waterworld, was somewhat
intimidated by the coca farm location. "I hadn't done anything like that
before. It was hugely challenging. We came in from every angle at once, with a
maximum of 13 cameras at one point."

Heaping thrill upon
thrill, Cohen and company, joining forces with the second unit under Alexander
Witt (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down), then alighted northward to
shoot the incredible sequence in which Xander drives a Corvette convertible off
of the Foresthill Bridge in Auburn, California (near Sacramento)--which rises
728 feet above the North Fork of the American River--and "surfs" the
car down before deploying a parachute that allows him to land safely. No wires.
No nets. Twenty cameras captured this incredible stunt, including 11 35mm, two
16mm and three mini DV video cameras on the ground; one aerial in a helicopter;
and three specially-designed systems from Ed Gutentag's Crashcam Industries
plummeting to its final resting place inside the Corvette.

"I worked with
Rich Wilkes to front load the first act with a lot of action," says Rob
Cohen. "I like to uncork something really big very soon, like the highway
truckjacking in The Fast and the Furious. This way, the audience feels
like they're getting their money's worth, and can sit back and reall